Talk:Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher
I don't remember her name at all. TR 17:35, 7 February 2008 (UTC) Is this Adam making stuff up? Turtle Fan 07:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC) There is a throw-away line early in the book where Bushell turns on the wireless to listen to the news. This would be the second evening after the theft of "The Two Georges". He listens to the newscaster report on MLK's speech in a stop-over in Pittsburgh during his trans-continental train trip. The newscaster then reports on Bushell's news conference that had been held that afternoon. The newscaster then starts to report "In London, the prime minister said - " and Bushell shuts it off. He thinks "he didn't care what the prime minister said. She was six thousand miles away and knew even less about the matter than he did . . ." HT doesn't mention the PM by name but given the twee appearance of historical characters through-out the book, Thatcher would fit even though the story takes place in 1996 while in OTL Thatcher left office in 1990. However, I do disagree with Adam's depiction of Britain having such tight control of the NAU as he does in this article. Throughout the book, it is pretty clear that the NAU has a fair amount of autonomy. If the situation were as depicted here, I would expect Thatcher would have dispatched a squad of Scotland Yard detectives by airship within a day of the theft and no nonsense from the "colonials". Also, when MLK expels Bonaparte, the latter protests it but doesn't question MLK's authority to do so. The very fact that the Holy Alliance has an ambassador to the NAU argues that it had some autonomy. Why send a representative to someone who can't treat with you? It would have been a consulate appointment instead. As I say, I'm fine with an article having Thatcher as PM of Great Britain but not as "Imperial PM" as depicted here. ML4E 04:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC) :Ok, I'll buy that it was Maggie. But everything else is speculation without much basis. I agree with ML4E that the NAU was autonomous. So the stripped down article is just fine. TR 05:41, 9 February 2008 (UTC) Right Honourable Now that we're including titles in the article names, should we call Prime Ministers "Right Honourable"? Turtle Fan 02:32, 7 June 2009 (UTC) :I'm not 100% sure if you mean we should include "RH" in the name of the article. ::I do. Turtle Fan 21:09, 7 June 2009 (UTC) :Presuming that you are: isn't that more of an honorific rather than an official title? Certainly the title "Baron" etc implies that the person may be referred to as the "right honorable", as does having held the office of the PM. ::Not sure if it's a formal title or merely a styling like the far more seldom-used "His Excellency the President of the United States." I do believe that only a former Prime Minister of a Commonwealth realm is entitled to use the honorific, however, though I don't know on what I'm basing that. :::My understanding is that it is an honorific similar to "His Excellency" rather than a title. In addition to PMs, it also includes G-Gs such as Michaëlle Jean, the seal heart eater. ML4E 03:35, 8 June 2009 (UTC) ::::Governors-General, you say? Then if we wanted to do that we'd have to make the Duke of Connaught "Right Honourable." But he's already HRH. You know, seeing those two honorifics juxtaposed makes me ready to abandon RH right away. We don't go around naming articles "His Majesty Philip II of Spain" nor even "The Esteemed Sir Skombros". Turtle Fan 19:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC) ::You now, I once had a series of very strange dreams in the same night, about two years ago--right after Blair left office. In one of them Blair was an old friend of mine. He and I were riding a bus together and it was the first time I'd seen him since his retirement. I teased him by saying "Well if it isn't the Right Honourable Tony Blair!" and he responded "Well if it isn't the Right Honourable John Jorgensen!" Then he agreed to use his still-considerable political clout to help me immigrate to the UK, for I'd been thrown out of both the US and ROK upon the discovery that I was secretly a North Korean national. Turtle Fan 21:09, 7 June 2009 (UTC) :Anyway, that would make the name of the articles unpleasantly long. TR 12:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC) ::Perhaps. Turtle Fan 21:09, 7 June 2009 (UTC) "The bell it tolls for thee, Maggie."-Dennis Skinner, Labour MP for Bolsover, before the Queen's Speech, 1989 A British vlogger whom I'm fond of following (to whom I referred a question on the procedures for replacing a deceased PM when we were hypothesizing about TBS) issued ten predictions for 2012 last night. One of them is that Mrs T will die this year. Last year he predicted it would be Kim Jong-Il dying in 2011. He was right, though barely. (Unless the KWP authorities delayed releasing news of Kim's death for a while--I'm always suspicious of the timetables of news stories taken from that source.) If he's right, Living Persons will continue to shrink, though Al Stewart has gotten its numbers back up to what they were before poor old Havel bought it. I suspect Thatcher's death will be far more noticeable than Havel's. Turtle Fan 03:31, January 4, 2012 (UTC) RIP I don't suppose anyone would care to discuss her legacy? Donut, maybe? He honored us with a rare visit today. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:53, April 9, 2013 (UTC) :I guess I don't generally find much to love in her domestic policies. Individualism (her watch word) is a nice thing, and I think something we should all strive for, but, in the present, far too many think of individuality as a zero-sum game: "We both can't be individuals, so I will do everything in my power to ensure mine, at the expense of yours." Thatcher herself on the one hand praised individualism, but was led by her Victorian morality to curb the individuality of people she wasn't fond of herself (Section 28 being the most obvious example). ::Indeed, she did seem to be laced with a touch of inconsistency there, as so very many individualists are. :The desire to privitize everything she could probably yielded mixed results. Many a Labour politician has said that some of that was good for the country. I'll defer to those who live in the system. ::I always wondered why it was such an obsession for her. The tributes that have come pouring in did make me realize just how far in the other direction the pendulum had swung, so that's more understandable in the UK than in Reaganomics. ::The coal miners' strike was ugly all around but she certainly seemed to take a savage glee in breaking the union's back--not as a necessary prerequisite to restoring services, nor even as punishment for tangling with her, but because she saw it as something that should not exist. The same attitude that's led to perennial depressions in so many communities in West Virginia and Pennsylvania over here. :Since the majority of Falklanders (if the last polling data I saw was correct, it's almost unanimous) wish to remain British, rather than become Argentinian, I think her call on the Falklands war was probably the best one. ::Perhaps, though I've always been struck by the imprudence of the conflict. Lots of creeping socialism in Latin America, and here's one of the most important anti-Soviet Cold Warriors attacking one of South America's most pro-US governments for what looks to Latinos like naked imperialism. And of course the US had to support the UK, which did our foreign policy no favors. ::Her policy toward Ireland was despicable. Of course I don't support the assassination of elected leaders, but the message she'd been broadcasting to nationalist communities over and over was "As long as I'm in charge, you will never get a fair hearing to petition the government for redress of your legitimate grievances." In the context of Anglo-Irish relations up to that point, what did she expect would happen? ::Of course, if the UK has to choose between cozying up to us or the EU, I'd much rather have them with us. And in that area she was an Atlanticist champ. :I guess that's probably it. ::Apparently she was the first political leader anywhere to warn of the need to take action on climate change. Her decision to take, of all possible lobbying jobs, a position shilling for big tobacco was unfortunate. Her arguments against extraditing Pinochet were . . . original, and surprisingly I find myself sympathizing with them on principle. ::I've heard it said she didn't do enough to increase the profile of women in politics. There are surprisingly few feminine names on Wikipedia's list of her Cabinet appointments, at any rate. I for one have never bought into the notion that a woman politician has a duty to promote other women. If gender solidarity trumps policy preferences, exactly how is the case that gender should not be a consideration in choosing leaders served? And since men continue to be overrepresented in government, is it really a good idea to abandon that case? Turtle Fan (talk) 19:23, April 11, 2013 (UTC) : (For the purposes of our little project: our decision to make Thatcher the unnamed female PM in T2G is probably correct; in the past few days, I've been reminded that if there were ever a person who was born to govern a global British Empire, it was Thatcher.) TR (talk) 15:45, April 11, 2013 (UTC) The Two Georges Another too speculative T2G article. It would be awesome to have a Thatcher page here, but a XX UKPM doesn't automatically translate to her.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 18:50, February 9, 2016 (UTC) :Take a look at the beginning of this Talk Page for our justification then. The speculation removed was Adam again. It is mildly amusing to me that Jonathan is going through these T2G pages almost exactly eight years later. (Feb. 2008 vs Feb 2016.) ML4E (talk) 22:19, February 9, 2016 (UTC) :I'm actually inclined to agree with Jonathan on this one, for many of the reasons we didn't add an ItPoME section to Akihito. While MLK was historical, the rest of the world leaders, both named (Charles III, Francois IV) and unnamed (the Tsar, whoever else) are fictional. This one little unnamed reference is an incredibly thin reed. TR (talk) 06:08, March 5, 2016 (UTC) ::Unnamed PM of the UK in the Minor Characters article then. Lit. Comm. or not about Thatcher? ML4E (talk) 19:32, March 5, 2016 (UTC) :::If consistency is the goal, then no. I'll miss her, though. Turtle Fan (talk) 19:42, March 5, 2016 (UTC) ::::Well, she was a Conservative candidate for Dartford in 1950 and 1951 in OTL, so she was getting onto the national radar if not the national stage during THW's timeframe. Fallout might favor us with a quick reference to "that young Roberts woman who argued for a stronger response to the Russians/ties to the US/etc". It would be a stretch; Daisy Baxter doesn't live in the Dartford constituency, but HT's pulled off that kind of reference before. TR (talk) 20:15, March 5, 2016 (UTC) :::::In that case, should we hold off on deleting her for a few months, so we don't risk another Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor situation? :::::Come to think of it, we'd also have to edit the Prime Ministers template to remove the link. And there is the real possibility that, should the EU vote go against him on June 23, Cameron's premiership will fall. In which case we'd just have to edit that template again. Not that that seems like a very strong case against deleting, now that we've committed to it. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:49, March 5, 2016 (UTC) ::::::Let's just pull the trigger. Charles V was an anomaly. The only other person we wound up restoring that I can think of is James Buchanan; unlike Charles, who we wound up restoring a mere two months after deletion through "Eyewear", Buchanan came back about 18 months after deletion through "Lee at the Alamo" I'm not holding my breath for her to magically appear in Fallout. TR (talk) 22:27, March 5, 2016 (UTC) :::::::Well, in that case . . . :::::::https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeLA6fnfyoc :::::::The way Kinnock bawls his eyes out always cracks me up. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:51, March 6, 2016 (UTC)